The Inferno

Hell broke loose in Norway one day about a year ago when venerable Professor Ole Hallesby, speaking over the state broadcasting system, startled Scandinavian sinners with the warning: "If you are not a believer, be careful! If you were to collapse and die suddenly, you would crash straight into Hell!"

Newspapers seethed with letters demanding that 74-year-old Theologian Hallesby be bounced off the air for his fundamentalist ideas, or defending him as God's prophet to a backsliding world. As the controversy bubbled on, an old theological opponent of Hallesby's, Bishop Kristian Schjelderup, 60, of Hamar, entered the argument. Hallesby's idea of Hell, he said, is based on "doubtful and imperfect interpretations that others are applying to the straight words of Christ."

By the time the argument had spread to Sweden and Denmark and inflamed letter-writers had quoted practically the whole Bible, a damnable thing happened to perdition-preaching Theologian Hallesby: he was convicted of tax fraud over a period of at least ten years. He resigned his presidency of the Lutheran Inner Mission Society, stopped preaching, canceled a lecture tour. But the pother he had started went on. Should Hell be preached as part of the Gospel, or shouldn't it?

Last week the Ministry of Church and Education published a 100-page document designed to settle the question. The solution: both sides could be right. There is "a place for shades in the interpretation of the Bible, and science has not found any homogeneous view regarding the Bible's words on perdition."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.